United Airlines’ use of larger aircraft on routes previously flown by Boeing Co’s grounded 737 MAX jets is costing the carrier money in the short-term, the company’s President Scott Kirby said in a letter to employees on Tuesday. Chicago-based United, which owns 14 MAX jets and has dozens more on order, has been using its larger 777 or 787 aircraft to cover routes formerly flown by the suspended MAX planes, without being able to fill the extra last-minute seats. “Of course, we can’t keep this up… (www.reuters.com) 更多...

- So many opinions, so few facts. First, understand what were the planned UAL routes for their fleet of 737 MAX 9s BEFORE they became grounded. Planned MAX Routes were in two basic categories: A) West Coast cities to Hawaii. (SFO & LAX) and B) Houston IAH to Central America / Latin America. To operate these routes, UAL requires ETOPS rated aircraft with enough seats to accommodate the booked SLF. Thus, they trot out spare 777/787 for the operations & fly with lots of empty seats. Since I travel UAL from Newark, I would have preferred UAL to shift some aging 757-767 from EWR duty to cover the missing MAXes, & deploy 787 for the EWR to Europe routes operated with tattered 767s

Why are they not "able to fill the extra last-minute seats"? Sure, on the first few days, there wasn't enough notice, but they quickly knew they'd be using larger jets for months and could easily add ticketed passengers to the extra seats. It doesn't even matter what they charge; they're paying to fly the bigger jets anyway, so the extra tickets sold would be 100% profit. Even at normal fares, they'd have no trouble picking up all the passengers holding canceled AAL and SWA tickets.

I guess your seat mile cost structure is a little wonky then... Read between the lines. Costing money? Yes, all jets cost money. Did you mean hurting profit? Smells like a "loss of use" class action lawsuit in the works.

Good for you Mike Wyss. They may be less fuel efficient, but my wife and I like the 767 because of its 232. Much better than the mile long 757 whic is basically the same aircraft. Air Canada shuttles 767 from Momtreal, Toronto, to Fort Lauderdale and it works.

777s and 787s have far more dwell/turn around time between flights on the ground than the 757s and other ETOPS 737s. It is much easier to use them as subs with a much smaller impact to the overall operation.

United may also be using 777s and 787s to cover 767s doing 757 flying so the 757s can do the MAX flying.

That being said I'm UA is also flying their other 737s more aggressively to cover MAX schedules too.

I'm sure United does use some smaller aircraft as replacements for 737. They can analyze load factors. Since Southwest and American are cancelling hundreds of flights a day, United is in a position to pick-up their loss with the larger planes. Don't know why American hasn't brought back some of their MD80's. They only stopped using them last year.